


No One's Going To Stick The Pieces Together For You

by gerty_3000



Category: Hotline Miami (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:23:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gerty_3000/pseuds/gerty_3000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Beard = (Rouven) Rozwell</p>
    </blockquote>





	No One's Going To Stick The Pieces Together For You

**Author's Note:**

> Beard = (Rouven) Rozwell

He stares down at the pink flyer with lips quirked in an emotionless frown. Seriously considering this? Patriotism. He’s never thought of himself as a patriot - just as someone doing what everyone wanted him to do. Well. What he felt everyone wanted him to do. The protests broadcast always seemed to hint that an even split of the populace screamed for fighting, and the other screamed for peace. He needed something to do, so he enlisted. Became a hero of some sort.

It sits in a foggy haze at the back of his mind, shaking and blurry and dark at the edges like a mirage in extreme heat, wavering and fracturing into a perfect image when he focuses hard. He remembers the pain, remembers his squad, remembers the flash of fire and and tinnitus and and and and a body ripped in two and and a man beside him screaming for the other and coughing up thick streams of blood and and and

He remembers the funeral that comes so quickly to mind that he has to lay his forehead against the cool, impersonal wood of his dining room table, has to take deep breaths through his nose. He remembers the long phone calls. He remembers the man he liked to think he loved, clinging to him so tight and he let go he let go he let go and he remembers the fire, he remembers the news broadcast, he remembers that he’s the last surviving member of the Ghost Wolves and all else has left him. 

He never considered himself a patriot but the time he spent fighting alongside Rozwell and Barnes and Daniels was the time he felt most alive in the whole of his time on Earth. If he weren’t sitting, the wave of sudden clarity would have staggered him, left him laying on the floor gasping and sobbing breathless with a fist crammed into his stomach and mouth as if to physically push down the ache inside.

He feels so lonely, and with tears welling up in his eyes he lifts his head again and glances over the now-shaking words of the magenta flyer; his throat tight and adams apple bobbing with the restrained urge to cry. Patriotism. He isn’t a patriot, but in the army, he had purpose. He never had purpose before, never knew much else but aimless drifting - dejection and listlessness were close bedfellows before he met Rozwell and had an actual bedfellow.

The Lieutenant killed with purpose, so he killed with purpose. Rozwell didn’t like it, constantly seemed morose after a mission or the prospect of having to go through with holding his rifle, such skill carried in the scarred arms, determination to finish a job merely so he could go home rattling around in his orange-haired head, but what was he to do but mirror that purpose in his superior? He followed close behind with the dedication of a Priest to his God; he had a reason to be when he was with that man.

Dead. Engulfed in nuclear fire. A sharp clench in his stomach and the way the room seemed to tilt on it’s axis reminded him that no matter what he did, it wouldn’t bring him back. Gone forever in those irradiated flames as scarlet as the rest of him. 

He presses his forehead against the table harder, till it causes a dull ache to radiate from the front of his skull to the base of his brain stem, and can’t suppress the sound that bubbles inside him, that spills out as a pained wail that fills his dingy apartment, muffled in the rest of the noises in the city that surrounds him. He can’t help himself, can’t keep the noise down, the tears that suddenly spill and add just another water stain to the old wood. The flyer fallen to the floor beside him, but he knows what he’ll do.

Rozwell killed those sons of bitches, and was killed by them. Their enlistment gave them purpose, their bond forged in smoldering Hawaiian heat and singing gun metal and molten Russian arterial blood splashed across their faces; love entangled in the silent conversations and legs shyly bumping into each other and standing side-by-side in the tepid downpour of summer storms. It was all he knew - all his friend (lover?) had given to him - his purpose.

He will fight for him, fight in the name of him. Avenge him? Something sappy like that, the corner of his mouth twitches as he wipes away the searing wetness on his cheeks, he considers his friend’s fate and finds it wanting. This was not how the Lieutenant was supposed to go out, not standing helpless under the warhead. If he dies fighting for him, it will be with purpose.

Purpose is all he has left.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that Jacket willingly joined 50 Blessings; he saw the Colonel's impassioned speech about being an animal, killing because they liked it deep down, etc, and internalized it, memorized it. After the war, 50 Blessings came to be, and I don't believe that Jacket would have been ignorant enough to feel forced into it, or need to be threatened. My other thought on it is that Jacket is an empty person - he's not necessarily /bad/, he's just alone and hollow, and tries to fill that emptiness with whatever 'good' he can take. Seeing as Beard is considerable one of the most pure characters of the series (right after Girlfriend, followed by the rest of the Ghost Wolves), Jacket takes every aspect of what Beard is, and makes it his own. Beard killed Russians? Clearly must have been for a good purpose, he reasons, not realizing that Beard is only in the army because he couldn't dodge the draft fast enough.


End file.
